Heirloom Pioneer Wild Plum Jelly

We had a bumper yield of heirloom Pottawattamie Plums this year.  The branches were weighed down with plump, big (for Pottawattamie plums) fruit.  They reminded me of grape clusters hanging on the tree.  These wild plum trees (more shrub-like) originated along the Mississippi and were brought here by the Mormon Pioneers.  Our tree has to be over 100 years old.  We baby it along.  It is an OLD tree.

 We picked about 5 gallons of fruit from our little tree.

Be sure to wash the picked plums very well to remove any bird leavings and sort through the washed fruit and cull out the damaged, mushy fruit. Some of the plums were smashed after the ride back to the city.  I removed these along with some twigs and leaves.

   The skin of this plum is tough and the pits hang to the flesh and are hard to remove so my big steamer makes short work of juicing them and I make jelly instead of jam.  It's much less labor intensive.

Be sure to use a large, heavy bottomed pot and a long handled wooden spoon to make jelly.  The jelly needs to come to a rolling boil that you can't stir down and you don't want the jelly to boil over or to burn yourself.  See that rolling boil?  The heavy bottomed pot ensures that the jelly won't scorch.  I used an 8 quart stockpot for 5 1/2 cups of juice. You need a very deep pot!

Jars of jewels!

Our tree yielded enough juice to make 32 assorted jars of jelly and 2 pints of syrup.  I just followed the instructions on the pectin package.  Easy!!!

Breakfast will taste like a summer morning when we pop the tops of these jelly jars on a cold snowy winter day.

Linked to Garden Tuesday.